System and method for estimation of vehicle accident damage and repair

ABSTRACT

Described herein is a system and method for predicting the extent and cost of repair resulting from a vehicle accident. The estimates can be based on one or more of in-vehicle sensor measurements during the accident, external observations such as weather and traffic and road conditions and manually or digitally input accident reports. The gathered information is compared to information in a database from historical accidents and the resulting damage and costs for those. The information is classified according to impact force, direction and location along with the specific type of vehicle. Maintaining and refreshing the information and predictive models in the system is also part of the invention.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a related to international application PCT/IB2014/001656 titled “ONBOARD VEHICLE ACCIDENT DETECTION AND DAMAGE ESTIMATION SYSTEM AND METHOD OF USE”, filed on 27 Jun. 2014 and is herein incorporated by reference. PCT/IB2014/001656 claims the benefit of priority to both U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/840,383 titled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DETERMINATION OF VEHICLE ACCIDENT INFORMATION” filed on 27 Jun. 2013 and U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/846,203 tilted SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DETERMINATION OF VEHICLE ACCIDENT INFORMATION” filed on 15 Jul. 2013 both of which are herein incorporated by reference. The present application is also related to U.S. patent application titled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR USE OF PATTERN RECOGNITION IN ASSESSING OR MONITORING VEHICLE STATUS OR OPERATOR DRIVING BEHAVIOR”, application Ser. No. 13/679,722, filed Nov. 16, 2012; which claims the benefit of priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/578,511, filed Dec. 21, 2011; each of which above applications are herein incorporated by reference.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.

FIELD OF INVENTION

Embodiments of the invention are generally related to systems and methods to rapidly assess a vehicle accident and produce an estimate of damage and cost of repair. In an embodiment, the system monitors in-vehicle sensor output acquired during an accident, then compares that output with a database of information on previous similar accidents to estimate damage and amount of repair work that may be needed. In other embodiments, the estimate is transmitted to the accident scene in near real-time either to the vehicle or to an insurance adjustor or other authorized party carrying a mobile device.

BACKGROUND

Standard methods of dealing with repairing damage due to an vehicle accident consist of:

-   -   Visually assessing the damage,     -   Estimating the cost of repairs based on prior experience of the         assessor     -   Finding a repair facility and a time when they can do the work

Current state of the art is to perform these tasks manually which is time consuming and requires input from several individuals including an insurance adjuster, one or more estimators from a body shop, a searcher for replacement parts, work on the part of the driver or the insured in negotiating an insurance settlement and the list goes on.

It may also be necessary, for insurance purposes, to assign blame so that the insurance of the responsible party is charged. This is typically done by interviewing participants in the accident and/or witnesses of the accident. It can also, in part, be done by examining the damage to the two vehicles to facilitate learning who hit who.

SUMMARY

In an embodiment of this invention, it is an object to perform a rapid assessment of damage and needed repair resulting from a vehicle accident.

The above may be performed by acquiring information about the vehicle accident from a variety of sources and comparing that information to the same information compiled from other previous accidents that is housed in a database of historical accident information. Estimates of resulting damage and repairs are then based on the comparisons.

In some embodiments, there is a link between the system that performs the assessments and providers of repair services and also parts warehouses in order to determine the availability of parts and approximate time of repair.

GLOSSARY

Accident Damage and Repair Estimate: a document or report (either hardcopy or online) that results from analysis of information relating to an accident, that estimates the amount and extent of damage to a vehicle and how much work and/or money it will take to fix it.

In-vehicle: Refers to anything that is part of the vehicle or within or attached to the vehicle.

Sensors: measurement devices which measure parameters that are directly or indirectly related to the amount and extent of damage incurred during a vehicle accident or to the underlying cause of an accident. Sensors could be in-vehicle—either part of the vehicle or an after-market attachment to the vehicle such as a fleet management system or as part of a mobile device within the vehicle such as the sensors in a mobile phone—like accelerometers or gyroscopes. Sensors may also be outside the vehicle such as roadside traffic counters in the vicinity of the vehicle, weather stations, and satellite or airborne based sensor such as LIDAR. Sensors that can inform interested individuals about the condition of pavement, weather, freeze thaw conditions or the like are included.

Transceiver: A means to communicate between two devices whether it be wired or wireless. Examples are two-way radios, mobile phones, wired modems and the like.

Location: where an object is relative to a reference frame. The location of a vehicle is some embodiments is relative to the earth in terms of a coordinate system such as latitude and longitude (and perhaps elevation).

Vehicle: any object capable of moving material or people along a transportation network. This includes cars, trucks, boats, airplanes and the like.

External Observations: See the definition of sensors above for examples of observations that can come from outside the vehicle. Source for this information can also be from web services, for example weather data, or traffic information that is a feed coming in from a FM sideband via an FM receiver.

Reference (for a database): an index or other attribute that can be used to select database records of interest by querying using the index or attribute. For example reference for accident information could be: location, time, time of day, time of week; make of vehicle, year of vehicle (or Vehicle Identification Number), weather conditions, location of impact (zone on the car), direction of impact, force of impact and the like.

Normalized: transforming data from a variety of sources into the same units, in the same frame of reference.

Historical Accident Database: a database or collection of linked databases containing information that is related to individual accident events where all information is cross referenced so that it can be used for statistical analysis of accidents and the cost of repair resulting from the accident.

Cross-referenced: With respect to a database, one entry can be queried as to its relationship to another if there is some type of relationship between the two. For example, a certain model of waterpump produced by General Motors may have been used in a variety of car models over a variety of model years, so the part number for the water pump will be cross referenced to vehicle model number, year, engine type. Also note these parameters may not be sufficient information, because a part used may change mid-model year. For example a wheel type my not be compatible halfway through a model year because the lug spacing was changed for safety reasons. In this case, the wheel would have to be referenced to the specific Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) which could be further cross referenced to a linked database containing more detailed information.

Confidence Interval: One method of expressing the probability that an outcome will be observed to happen within a specific range for a given set of circumstances. For example the probability that the front bumper will have to be replaced for a collision with a force of impact perpendicular to the front bumper and impact at speed greater than 5 mph is 95 percent for a Ford Focus and 92 percent for a BMW 928i.

Bias: Tendency to make certain observations more than others.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

FIG. 1 is a system overview for estimating vehicle accident damage and cost FIG. 2 is a sample of how vehicle faults are indicated in a diagnostic trouble codes (DTC)

FIG. 3 is an example of a method to divide up damage locations on a vehicle to 8 pie shaped zones.

FIG. 4 is another method to divide damage zones by panels.

FIG. 5A-5C are typical pages of an accident report.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION Overview

In embodiments of the present invention, one of the goals is to predict the amount of damage that is incurred during an accident and how much it will cost to repair. Damage incurred is a function, for example, of what kind of car was being driven, the age and condition of the car, the location, direction and force of collision impact on the vehicle during the accident. The cost of repair, for example, is a function of the locale of the accident (regional variation in parts costs and labor costs), the parts that need to be replaced given the specific class of accident, the materials needed, for example paint and sandpaper, and the amount of labor required to perform the repairs.

Since no two accidents will be the same, the accidents must be classified or grouped together, so that information based on observed parameters recorded during historical accidents can be used to predict and assess damage that happens in accidents occurring now.

It is further object of this invention to locate and reserve parts that may need to be replaced—immediately after an accident.

Another object of the invention is to schedule time for repairs with qualified technicians—immediately after the accident.

It is an object of the invention to continually update the database of records for previous accidents with information that can be better utilized to predict future assessments of accident damage.

It is an object of the present invention to determine blame or apportion the blame in a two vehicle accident.

It is an object of the present invention to estimate when the cost of repairs would exceed the worth of the vehicle.

System Designs

Systems designed to predict damage and necessary repair resulting from vehicle accidents can come in a variety of configurations. However basic components and/or functionality are common to most as shown in FIG. 1. Primary components are:

-   -   In-vehicle data collection module 102     -   Database of historical accident information 104     -   Accident review module 110

When initially constructing the database 104, multiple sources of information 106 are used which include accident reports from police or insurance adjusters, repair invoices, parts lists, and the like. In addition, sensor data that was recorded (if available) during accident events is also stored in the database 104. The database 104 may contain the raw data, the predictive functions, and metadata (for example, error estimates on the validity of the data). The database 104 also contains derivative products of the sensor data such as categorized or normalized versions of the input data and/or functions for which to categorize or normalize each type of input. Once an initial database is configured and populated, statistical predictors are formulated based on the historic information in order to predict damage and cost in future accidents. In operation, an in-vehicle data collection model 102 comprises a sensor interface capable of receiving and storing data from sensors within the vehicle or part of the vehicle. The data collection module can communicate with an accident review module 110 which can either be located in the vehicle or remote to the vehicle. Communication can be either by wired or wireless methods. In addition the accident review module 110 can acquire information from external sensors networks such as weather feeds and traffic. Note this function could alternatively take place in the in-vehicle data collection module 102. The accident review module 110 receives all the pertinent information concerning an accident, categorizes the information; inputs the information into a predictive function, then predicts the damage incurred during the accident and the anticipated cost. At least one of the raw data and derivatives of the data, such as normalized data, categories data, and error estimates are then transmitted to the database 104 to be used in updating the predictive function. Later information from repair facilities are also input into the database and are used to validate the prediction and improve the prediction going forward (not shown).

Communication Protocols

Referring to the schematic of a system FIG. 1, the information that is either stored or generated in the various components needs to be communicated to other modules of the system. Sensors need to communicate with data collection module 102. If the sensors are part of the car (air bag sensors, integrated GPS—for example) then communication would typically happened using the car's system bus which could be either conventionally wired or based on fiber optics provided the data collection module 102 was integral to the car electronics. If the data collection module 102 was an add-on product or consists of software running on a mobile device within the car, then communication with the integral vehicle sensor may be by using an interface that can read on-board diagnostic (OBD II) codes by interfacing with a car portal designed for external communications.

Another type of code that is somewhat standardized for automotive diagnostics is the diagnostic trouble codes (DTC). FIG. 2 describes how a typical DTC is structured.

Many vehicles have bluetooth or similar short range wireless protocol communication modules and can transmit information such as DTC codes to nearby devices.

If the vehicle data collection module has software running on a general purpose computing device such as a mobile phone, the phone or other device could be plugged into the vehicle using a wired means such as a Universal Serial Bus (USB) or short range wireless such as Bluetooth.

Sensor that are part of the mobile device can also be considered in-vehicle sensors provided the device is in or attached to the vehicle. These type of sensors can include gyroscopes, accelerometers, altimeters and GPS, for example. Communication with these sensors would be over the data bus of the portable device.

External data coming from services or external sensors can be communicated through an internet connection, FM sidebands (such as traffic messaging channel information TMC).

Database Design and Input Normalization

In embodiments of this invention, vehicle damage from an accident is predicted by comparing the observed conditions that occur during an accident with similar observed conditions for similarly classed accidents stored in a historical vehicle accident database and the damage resulting from those accidents. Algorithms are developed to classify each type of accident as succinctly as possible, given the available data, such that when the conditions of a present accident match a classification, this can be used with a degree of certainty, to predict resulting damage and the parts and services necessary to effect repairs.

In an embodiment, the observed conditions of interest during an accident include:

-   -   Specific type of vehicle, including make, year, model, weight         and options     -   Condition of the vehicle (prior damage, corrosion, state of         repair)     -   Location of collision impact, force and direction     -   Locale of the accident (for determination of regional variable         costs)     -   Environmental factors (weather, road conditions)

Raw data that may be used to predict accident damage and repair needed can come from a plurality of sources. Sources include:

-   -   In-vehicle Sensors         -   Accelerometer to measure force of impact and direction of             impact and any motion that occurs after the accident such as             rollover of the vehicle         -   Gyroscope to measure direction of travel when a GPS is             unavailable         -   GPS for speed and direction of travel         -   Air bag deployment and seatbelt sensors         -   ABS brake sensors     -   External Sensors         -   Weather from web services         -   Traffic information from web services or FM sideband             (Traffic Messaging Channel)         -   Road Condition Information from web-sources such as highway             departments     -   Other means of collecting information         -   Police Reports (subsequently manually entered into the             system database by manual entry using a computer interface             application         -   Insurance adjuster reports         -   Via the driver or passenger or observer of the accident             input from a mobile device running an interface or app that             allows the input and connects to the system.         -   Accident scene photographs depicting the damage which are             analyzed either manually or using image analysis techniques

Note that the historical accident “database” may be distributed, so that, for example, the predictive function may be in the vehicle and the historical raw data may be on a central server.

When initially building a historical vehicle accident database, it is likely that there will be a mix of more qualitative data, for example from manually entered police and insurance adjuster accident reports and quantitative data, for example, from in-vehicle sensors. As such there is a subjective element in the reporting and the likelihood of human error will reduce the quality of the manually entered data and therefore if the manually entered data makes up the bulk of the available information, the error in prediction of collision damage will be greater.

In addition, since much of qualitative information would have initially have been manually entered on a piece of paper, there will also be transcription errors regardless of whether the information is manually input into the database by a human or if the information is machine input using optical character recognition and algorithmic processing of the text.

Available information to input into the database will change with time. As more information of a quantitative nature or more precise, accurate and with less bias information becomes available, older more qualitative data will be replaced and the resulting predictive model or associated statistics will be updated to reflect the new data.

There are at least two methods to deal with disparate data (differing quality and precision) that can be used to model an event: 1) You can make the initial predictive model imprecise, for example, using quadrants, sextants, or octants or other slice of the vehicle to identify the location of impact and you could identify the force of impact quantitatively using low, moderate and extreme impact (or similar rating system); and 2) you could structure the database to support a more precise model, but indicate that initial predictions will have low accuracy.

FIG. 3 is an example of an imprecise method to represent where damage has occurred on a vehicle 302. A vehicle 302 is divided into a number of slices 304. Damage would be categorized by the number of a slice 304 it occurred in.

FIG. 4 is an example of a more precise model for classification of direction and location of impact on a vehicle 402. Differing components of the vehicle are identified and damage is associated with the component, for example, hood 404, left fender 414, left front door 408, left rear fender 410, trunk 412, and roof 406.

For information from disparate sources to be compared, the information must be normalized, i.e. converted to the same units of measure and be relative to the same reference frame. In addition, the quality and precision of the data must also be evaluated and represented within the database in a normalized fashion. In other words, if for example, one speed is known to be accurate within +/−10 mph, then all speeds in the database should have an error of estimate in mph (as opposed to kph for example).

A probability that a particular level of damage or type of damage will occur if a series of measured parameters fall within a specified ranges is calculated. No two accidents are alike, so any prediction will not be 100 percent accurate and it is best to either provide an error of estimate associated with each estimate and/or provide an upper and lower range of probable damage and costs.

If an initial build of a database is created from mostly quantitative data, then it may not be possible to predict specific damage and may only be possible to predict cost of repair, and with a large degree of uncertainty.

If the input data is a mix of in-vehicle sensor data, and manually input qualitative data then, using statistical techniques know in the art, the predictive function can be generated weighting the sensor data more heavily than the qualitative data.

With respect to force of impact, in-vehicle sensor measurements can be used to accurately calculate, using methods known in the art, the force and direction of impact, if the velocity or acceleration and mass of the vehicle or vehicles involved in the collision is known during the period of time encompassing the accident.

Direction and area of impact (on the vehicle) is very important. For example, if a vehicle if backing up at slow speed and the driver does not notice a telephone pole, if the impact on the rear bumper is more towards the middle and the direction of impact is more perpendicular to the bumper, as opposed to impact near the corner of the bumper at an angle less than perpendicular, this could mean the difference in no damage to the bumper, as opposed to having to replace the bumper—given the same speed of impact.

Likewise, the direction of impact given the same speed of impact, may cause a greater number of airbags being deployed making the difference between the vehicle being totaled and the vehicle being salvageable.

Reduction of Information from an Accident Report

FIGS. 5A-5C are an example of a typical accident report (this particular one is from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation) and it contains several parameters that can be used to provide input for a historical vehicle accident database.

Since no two accident reports would be the same, the raw data from many type of accident reports could be entered into a database, then normalized to be used in the predictive model.

The process could be as follows:

-   -   Create a section of the accident database to house the data from         each particular form     -   If the form is in paper form, scan in the pages of the report:         -   Optically recognize the characters and use search techniques             to find headings of interest—for example FIG. 5A 504 Vehicle             Registration # and further down the line Vehicle Year and             Vehicle Make.         -   Find the value associated with each heading and enter it             into the database         -   Manually enter other data, for example in FIG. 5A 506, it             may be necessary to interpret the vehicle damage (signified             by circling a code for the appropriate damage zone)             manually.     -   If the form is tag based (for example XML) or in other machine         readable form:         -   Enter the information into the database directly     -   Obtain information regarding the repairs that were performed to         fix each particular accident or alternatively determine if the         vehicle was totaled and the rationale for this determination.     -   Find statistical relationships between the damage assessment         from the accident reports and the repairs made.     -   Determine a common schema for the predictive database that all         the various report structures can be normalized to (see below)         and transpose all the data from differing reporting structures         to a single format (or at least store functions to normalize all         the information).

Values to be input into a database associated with collision impact can be approximated by the quantitative information provided in FIGS. 5A-5C. For example, in FIG. 5A, under the section “Sequence of Events” 502, you could determine whether an accident was a single car or multiple car accident. You could determine if there was more than one event. You could determine whether the object that was collided with, was rigid and unyielding or giveway during an accident. The force of impact could be assigned a value based on various events: for example, a collision with a utility pole (as indicated on the form—FIG. 5A 502 under heading 23) at a particular speed would generate a greater force of impact than a collision with a bicycle (as indicated on the form—FIG. 5A 502 under heading 4) given the same vehicle. A vehicle with more mass would have a greater force of impact than a lighter vehicle (mass could be determined by information in Section B of the accident form (FIG. 5A 502). Further in FIG. 5C 520—the crash diagram, the relative direction one or both vehicle were traveling could also be factored into the force calculation, however, it would most likely be necessary to limit the zones of impact based on the panel of the car impacted (door, fender, hood, etc) or on a quadrant or sextant, or octant for example as show in FIG. 5A 506.

As in FIG. 5A 502, there could be multiple events in sequence. For example, a glancing impact by one car with another could cause one of the cars to roll over. In which case you would have multiple impact locations. To quantify this, the database could be designed, similar to the accident form, to have multiple events, or the database could integrate the force of impact for the multiple events.

It should be noted in some embodiments, that more detailed information and information that does not have to be normalized or transposed is preferable. Also information that can be automatically acquired and processed, rather than manually entered is also preferable.

In an embodiment, as more sensor data that can be correlated to accident damage becomes available and is entered into the database, then manually entered and transposed data should be removed from the database and relationships should be re-calculated.

There will be bias associated with certain measurement types. An example would be transcription of the location of impact from a drawing on a police report (FIG. 5C 520), you would most likely visually estimate the direction of impact, and would furthermore probably enter an even value to the nearest 20 or 30 degrees. Therefore you would have a bias for measurements at even angles at fixed intervals.

More information on how to build the historical accident database and maintaining it for the purpose of categorizing accidents for damage assessment is covered in the related application PCT/IB2014/001656 which is incorporated herein by reference.

Post Accident Repair Information

In the historical vehicle accident database, there must also exist post-accident information associated with each accident. This information may include:

-   -   A listing of parts replaced     -   Body work done     -   Price of labor (preferably broken out by part installed or         service performed)     -   Price of parts     -   Time between accident and completed repair

This information must be associated with the accident report information and/or sensors information so that correlations can be made. Insurance companies are a likely source of information for both that accident report and the repair information.

Development of the Predictive Model

Armed with the populated historical vehicle accident database, a predictive function can be developed. As a starting point, it can be assumed that damage is a function of the specific vehicle, and the force of impact (including direction and location of impact on the vehicle). Using this assumption, for a given accident, a query can be run on the database to find all accidents that have:

-   -   A force of impact:         -   Approximately the same as the force of the present accident         -   In a similar direction and location of impact     -   The same or similar vehicle

Based on the query, a list of database entries should be returned that provide:

-   -   Parts that have been replaced and costs     -   Services that were performed and associated costs

Statistics can then be run on the returned entries: for example, the probability that a particular part was replaced; the range of costs to purchase and replace that part and so-on.

It should be noted if the vehicle accident database spans large geographic areas and large periods of time, then statistics would need to be adjusted (normalized) for things like present value of money and regional costs differentials.

Depending on how much information is in the database, a query could be very specific, for example, the vehicle model could be simply a Mustang, or the vehicle type could be a Mustang XL. The XL designation could correspond to a different trim package, for example, the XL may have magnesium wheels instead of steel. If the database is refined enough to have enough Mustang XL entries, then there may be a high probably, for example, that in a one car collision traveling at 35 mph where the impact with a stationary object occurred on the left front quarter panel, that left front magnesium wheel will have to be replaced. Alternatively if there is insufficient information about the Mustang XL in the database, then the query could be for all Mustangs. The returned information could be that it is likely that the left front wheel would have to be replaced, but the database does not distinguish costs for steel vs. magnesium wheels in this instance.

As the amount of information in the database continues to grow and be refined, the relationships for how to predict damage may change depending what factors correlate the strongest. It may be found for example, that all variations of the same vehicle develop similar damage during accidents or it may be found that there is significant differences in the amount and extent of damage if the same vehicle has a different engine type.

There will be regional variations for cost associated with repairs. Labor charges may be different for autobody technicians depending on location and also parts availability may vary from place to place. This factors also need to be accounted for in the database.

The database of information needs to contain a statistically significant amount of records that can be related to damage and repair. In other words, a quality standard need to be set, for example, a standard could be that cost estimates must be valid within plus or minus $500. Therefore there must be enough previous accident and cost of repair data to be able to statistically validate the quality standard for each category.

Determination of Damage from Sensor Data

In an embodiment, on-board sensors are monitored and the output recorded in volatile memory which is continually overwritten at intervals until some triggering event happens that is indicative of an accident. This could be for example, an air bag deployment or and acceleration value exceeding a threshold. Once the trigger occurs, then the stored data is no longer overwritten, but saved, such that there is information proceeding the accident and the sensor output continues to be recorded until such time as an ending event (such as the vehicle coming to rest) is observed in the sensor output.

Next, depending on the system configuration, the data is either analyzed within the vehicle to produce derivative output or the raw data itself is transmitted to an accident review module for performing analysis.

Derivative output could for example, be a parameter such as the impact force and direction as derived from 3 component accelerometer data. The force and direction could be further categorized into, for example: and impact zone and an impact force level and the direction of impact.

What is transmitted to an accident review module depends on how the prediction model is structured. If the model requires raw sensor data as input, then that is what is transmitted. Likewise, if the model requires further categorized data, then that is transmitted. In some embodiments, both raw data and derivative parameters of the raw data are transmitted, even if the raw data is not used in the predictive model. The transmitted raw data can then become part of the raw data in the database, so the predictive model can be updated by including the new raw data in the analysis.

The accident review module provided with the input data from the accident, then plugs in the information into the predictive model and returns a prediction.

The prediction will include some or all of the following:

-   -   A listing of parts that most likely need to be replaced (and         optionally probabilities that a part will need to be replaced)     -   A listing of costs associated with each part (for the region of         the accident)     -   Materials such as paint and supplies     -   The overall cost estimate (may include an upper and lower limit)

In embodiments, additional information is in the database or in a second linked database. This additional information includes an inventory of new and/or used parts and their location. In addition it may include the workload or backlog of various repair technicians and their availability to perform the predicted repairs that need to be done. Additional functionality of the accident review module in embodiments can do one or more of determining the availability of parts, materials and labor and/or request bids for each from providers that have the part/s, materials or time. The review module, in some embodiments will schedule delivery of the parts and repair labor based on the availability.

Once the damaged vehicle arrives at a shop for repairs, or alternatively if an insurance examiner makes an assessment, the evaluation of the actual repairs and the anticipated labor costs can be compared to the estimates made by the accident repair module. This manual evaluation can also be incorporated into the database to update the model.

In certain instances, for example, the magnitude of impact (or some other parameter) may exceed a statistically determined threshold value, and this would indicated that the vehicle should be totaled (not worth repairing). In these instances, the insurance company may decide to not even send an adjustor to review the case and expedite payment to the insurer.

In other instance, the magnitude of the impact may be such that the probability is that damage will be minor. In these instances, it may be prudent to not send an adjustor but rather settle for some cost that is slightly higher than the norm based on the historical database and avoid the cost of the adjustor visit.

Fault Determination in a Two Car Accident

In most states, in the United States at least, determination of liability in vehicle collisions is based on who caused of the accident. In some situations this fault may be jointly assigned, but not necessarily equally. For example, a driver may have been distracted and veered over the middle line into on-coming traffic, but an oncoming driver may have had ample time to move out of the way, but did not for some reason. In embodiments where in-vehicle sensors are used for accident assessment, these same sensor outputs can be used to infer blame (or exonerate a driver of blame). For example, the combination of GPS and accelerometer readings could indicate a sudden veering out of a lane and into incoming traffic. Another example may be that based on DOT information, the roads were icy at the time of an accident, but based on GPS data, the driver was exceeding a safe speed limit. These are just two examples of information that could be used to assign blame and at least contribute to the assignment of blame.

System Utilization

In an embodiment of the system and method, the prediction of damage and the estimated cost of repair is transmitted to the accident site shortly after the accident occurs. The transmission can occur to either the in-vehicle system or to a mobile device carried by an insurance adjuster or emergency response personnel. By having on-site information about the anticipated cost of repair, this can facilitate rapid settlement of insurance claims and expedite repair. Analysis of fault of the accident can facilitate whether or not a traffic citation needs to be issued by police at the scene.

If the analysis is transmitted to the car, results can be displayed either graphically and/or in text on a screen in the vehicle—for example, an infotainment system screen.

Implementations

The present invention may be conveniently implemented using one or more conventional general purpose or specialized digital computers or microprocessors programmed according to the teachings of the present disclosure, or a portable device (e.g., a smartphone, tablet computer, computer or other device), equipped with a data collection and assessment environment, including one or more data collection devices (e.g., accelerometers, GPS) or where the portable device are connected to the data collection devices that are remote to the portable device, that are connected via wired or wireless means. Appropriate software coding can readily be prepared by skilled programmers based on the teachings of the present disclosure, as will be apparent to those skilled in the software art.

In some embodiments, the present invention includes a computer program product which is a non-transitory storage medium (media) having instructions stored thereon/in which can be used to program a computer to perform any of the processes of the present invention. The storage medium can include, but is not limited to, any type of disk including floppy disks, optical discs, DVD, CD-ROMs, microdrive, and magneto-optical disks, ROMs, RAMs, EPROMs, EEPROMs, DRAMs, VRAMs, flash memory devices, magnetic or optical cards, nanosystems (including molecular memory ICs), or any type of media or device suitable for storing instructions and/or data.

Remarks

The foregoing description of the present invention has been provided for the purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise forms disclosed. The embodiments were chosen and described in order to best explain the principles of the invention and its practical application, thereby enabling others skilled in the art to understand the invention for various embodiments and with various modifications that are suited to the particular use contemplated. For example, although the illustrations provided herein primarily describe embodiments using vehicles, it will be evident that the techniques described herein can be similarly used with, e.g., trains, ships, airplanes, containers, or other moving equipment, and with other types of data collection devices. It is intended that the scope of the invention be defined by the following claims and their equivalence. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A system for vehicle accident damage and repair estimation, comprising: a in-vehicle data collection module, including one or more sensors configured to collect information during a timeframe encompassing an accident; a in-vehicle transceiver configured to transmit at least one of the collected information and derivatives of the collected information; a historical accident database which contains cross referenced entries for one or more of: vehicle type and equipment configuration, vehicle age, vehicle condition, accident type, accident severity, location of accident, vehicle impact zone, force and direction, time of accident, vehicle parts replaced and repaired, materials needed for repair, labor costs and material costs to effect repairs, and sensor data and derivative products of sensor data recorded for each accident; an accident review module configured to: receive the information from the data collection module via the communication module; classify the accident type and severity based on similar entries in the historical accident database; and generate an damage and repair estimate based on the comparison to similar entries.
 2. A system for vehicle accident damage and repair estimation, comprising: a data collection module configured to collect information about an accident; a historical accident database which contains cross referenced entries for one or more of: vehicle unique identification number, vehicle type and equipment configuration, vehicle age, vehicle condition, accident type, accident severity, location of accident, vehicle impact zone, force and direction, time of accident, vehicle parts replaced and repaired, materials needed for repair, labor and material costs to effect repairs, and sensor data and derivative products of sensor data recorded for each accident; and an accident review module configured to: receive the information from the data collection module via the communication module, classify the accident type and severity based on similar entries in the historical accident database, and generate an damage and repair estimate based on the comparison to similar
 3. The system of claim 2 wherein the data collection module is in-vehicle and wherein the collected information comprises information from one or more in-vehicle sensors during a timeframe encompassing the accident.
 4. The system of claim 2 further comprising: an in-vehicle transceiver capable of transmitting at least one of the collected information and derivatives of the collected information to the accident review module that is external to the vehicle.
 5. The system of claim 2 further comprising: a repair parts database which has cross-referenced entries including: location of each part; applicable vehicles; availability of each part; and cost of each part; wherein an estimate is generated for time and cost of repair based on the identified type and severity of the accident and the availability of parts in the vicinity of the accident.
 6. The system of claim 2 wherein the accident damage and repair estimate is transmitted to a mobile device or other device in possession of at least one of an insurance adjuster, an emergency responder and other authorized personnel.
 7. The system of claim 2 wherein the in-vehicle transceiver if further capable of receiving the accident damage and repair information from the accident review module.
 8. The system of claim 7 further comprising a display screen wherein the accident damage and repair information received by the in-vehicle transceiver are displayed on the display screen.
 9. The system of claim 2 wherein the data collection module comprises at least one of an application on a mobile device operated by an on-scene individual at the accident and manual data collection by an on-scene individual.
 10. The system of claim 2 wherein the historical accident database comprises information compiled from a plurality of historical accident reports.
 11. The system of claim 3 wherein the historical database comprises information compiled from in-vehicle sensors measurements for a plurality of accidents and derivatives thereof.
 12. The system of claim 3 wherein the classification of the accident type and severity is, at least in part, in terms of impact zones, direction of impact and force of impact.
 13. The system of claim 12 wherein the classification of the accident type and severity is configured for use at least in part to determine fault when the accident is a two car collision.
 14. The system of claim 2 wherein additional information is collected from at least one of sensors external to the vehicle, web services, and other observations external to the vehicle.
 15. The system of claim 2 wherein the historical database comprises information collected from at least one of sensors external to the vehicle, web services, and other observations external to the vehicle.
 16. The system of claim 2 wherein the damage and repair estimate includes a range of estimates and a statistical probability for the validity of the range or intervals within the range.
 17. The system of claim 2 wherein the historical accident database is continually updated by at least one of: adding newer accident data; removing data from older accidents; replacing more qualitative data with more quantitative data; replacing manually entered data with sensor data and sensor derived information; updating the predictive models based on the new data; and updating metadata associated with the quality of input data and the predictive model.
 18. A non-transitory computer readable medium, including instructions stored thereon which when read and executed by one or more computer processors cause the one or more computers processors to perform the steps of: implement a data collection module configured to collect information about an accident; implement a historical accident database which contains cross referenced entries for one or more of: vehicle type and equipment configuration, vehicle age, vehicle condition, accident type, accident severity, location of accident, vehicle impact zone, force and direction, time of accident, vehicle parts replaced and repaired, materials needed for repair, labor costs and material cost to effect repairs, and sensor data and derivative products of sensor data recorded for each accident in the historical accident database; and implement an accident review module configured to: receive the information from the data collection module; classify the accident type and severity based on similar entries in the historical accident database; and generate an damage and repair estimate based on the comparison to the similar entries. 